According to a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private nonprofit research group that is considered the official arbiter of economic contractions and expansions, the recession officially ended in June 2009.

The NBER committee made its determination after considering numerous economic data and concluding that several key measures of economic activity — including total output and industrial production -- pointed to June 2009 as the trough of that business cycle, according to the McClatchey-Tribune News Service.

The 18-month recession that started in December 2007 and ended in June of last year was the longest since the Great Depression in the 1930s, economists note.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said in the McClatchey-Tribune report that it was noteworthy that the panel settled on June as it was that month during which the spending from the Recovery Act stimulus was at its maximum.